


Webs

by ArtistOwl



Series: What the Truth Is [2]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Fae & Fairies, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27149731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtistOwl/pseuds/ArtistOwl
Summary: Is it really a surprise that Virgil looks the way he does under the glamour, when he's been acting a little like a spider his whole life?
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Deceit | Janus Sanders, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders
Series: What the Truth Is [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1981750
Comments: 10
Kudos: 167





	Webs

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of a series, it will make much more sense if you read the first part before you read this one.
> 
> rated T for cursing

Janus liked sleeping, generally. Oh sure, he was always ready to stay up far too late, or even pull an all-nighter every now and then, but he did really like sleep. He tended to only like it more when he was already asleep and someone was trying to rouse him, like whomstever the fuck was currently banging on his bedroom door before the sun had even risen.

Janus blindly threw his second pillow at the door. The knocking paused, then started up again, louder. Janus threw the pillow he was sleeping on, and promptly regretted it as soon as he laid back down. 

“ _Janus!_ ”

 _Virgil?_

Janus groaned into his mattress, but he was awake enough now to be uncomfortable laying without a pillow, and his little brother seemed distressed. Janus heaved himself up and stumbled over to the door, cracking it open and rasping out a “what?”

Virgil looked up at him. “I’m Spider-Man.”

Janus stared at him for a second before slamming the door shut.

“No, Janus, wait!”

“Night Virgil.” Janus turned and walked back to his bed, until he heard the knob turn and the door open. He spun back around and hissed at the preteen. “I didn’t say you could come in you little shit!”

“No, Janus, _look_.” In the dim moonlight streaming through his window, Janus could see that Virgil actually looked scared. The boy turned and flicked his wrist a few times, kind of like Spider-Man, and Janus was about to bodily shove him out the door, fae super-strength or not, when a pale tendril shot out of his wrist.

“What.”

“It’s spider silk. I mean, it’s thread with a weird-ass texture, but I think it’s spider silk. I’m Spider-Man. I’m _Toby Maguire_ Spider-Man. Oh my God, I’m not ready for the responsibility -”

“You can’t be Spider-Man,” Janus interrupted his spiral.

“Why not?”

“You can’t lie, so you can’t keep a secret identity. You’d be a shitty superhero. Also being a vigilante is illegal, and you wouldn’t be able to lie to the cops.” The too-goddamn-early logic Janus’s brain was providing seemed to reassure Virgil, and the kid calmed down a bit. “Can you even swing on it?”

Virgil tugged on the strand that had attached itself to Janus’s floor experimentally. “I dunno. Maybe.”

“Right, well, how about we find that out in the morning. Sleep now, spider-boy.” Janus ignored Virgil’s offended spluttering and pushed him out the door, about-faced, and collapsed onto his bed, ready to not move again for hours.

Damn. He’d forgotten his pillows.

* * *

Ever since Virgil had been a small child, he loved playing with string. He remembered sitting on the floor in front of his mother as she knitted, knotting and braiding and twisting and untwisting her scrap pieces.

When he was six, his mother handed him a pair of knitting needles and a skein of grey acrylic yarn, and taught him how to knit. The scarf he made was mostly unusable, due to the texture of the cheap yarn, but he’d caught on remarkably fast and the second half of the stitches were perfectly made, much to both his mother’s and his own surprise.

Virgil rather quickly moved on to more complex projects, working his way through his mother’s patterns books, then creating his own patterns when he wanted something different.

(“I didn’t see that pattern in the book,” his mother remarked as they watched Janus admire the sweater Virgil had given him for Christmas. It was mostly cable-knit, but with a rounded yoke circling the front and back with the border of a snake swallowing its own tail. Virgil was nine.

“I added to one of the patterns in it already.”

“Really? I didn’t see you writing anything down.”

“No, I told you, I made up part of the pattern.”

His mother gave him a strange look. “And you didn’t write any of it down? How did you keep the numbers straight?”

Virgil squirmed in his seat. “I...just did?” He’d made the pattern himself, why would he need to write it down?

Janus looked up at him. “How did you even get it to fit so well? You never measured me.”

Virgil huffed. “I’ve seen you before, of course I knew how big to make it.”

That only garnered him two strange looks. Virgil wasn’t entirely certain what he had done wrong, but he knew it was probably because he wasn't human.)

* * *

Virgil nodded along gently to his music (it really wasn’t the sort of music conducive to gentle nodding, but proper headbanging would disrupt his work and make his head hurt after a few seconds, so gentle nodding it was) as his knitting needles clicked comfortingly together. The pattern was a little too complex for him to listen to a podcast or watch a video while keeping it straight in his head, but just listening to music was nice enough.

He saw more than heard his roommate open their dorm room door and greet him, and pushed the headphones off his ears. “Hey Pat.”

“Are you knitting?”

Virgil looked down to confirm that he was, indeed, knitting. “Yeah.”

“Oh that’s so neat!” Patton enthused as he set his backpack down. “I didn’t know you could knit.”

“Yeah, Mom taught me when I was a kid.” 

“It looks beautiful! Is it a scarf?”

“Yeah.” It was only a foot or so long at this point, but it was still recognizable as a scarf. Virgil had patterned it with ridges shaped like diamonds inset in each other. He was using his own silk for it, and took a moment to thank his past self for having the foresight to roll a ball of the stuff beforehand - he couldn’t imagine how weird it would look to Patton for a pale grey thread to be feeding out through his wrist directly onto the needles.

“I love it! Is it for something in particular, or were you just having fun?”

“Oh, it’s...uh, it’s Roman’s Christmas gift. I’m going to dye it red once I’m done.”

Patton gasped. “Oh, Roman’s going to _love_ it!”

Virgil couldn’t help the small smile that snuck onto his face. “You think so?”

“Oh _definitely_.”

Virgil hummed in response and went back to his knitting. Hopefully, Roman would like it. Maybe, if Virgil didn’t mention anything about how he made it, he would.

* * *

Roman hummed happily to himself as he climbed the stairs to his apartment building. His sophomore writing seminar - his last class of the day - had let out early, and since Patton and Logan were still in their classes today, that meant he got a whole extra half-hour alone in the apartment with Virgil. He wondered, idly, whether Virgil would actually be getting his homework done, or if he would still be decorating the apartment for Halloween - for a Winter fae, Roman’s soulmate sure loved autumn’s biggest holiday a lot.  
Roman’s question was answered when he opened his door and saw Virgil hanging cobwebs up in the ceiling corners. He still felt justified in the “what the _fuck_ ,” that burst out of him nearly involuntarily, making Virgil jump and turn to face him, with a shocked expression that quickly slipped into guilt. Roman’s heart leapt to his throat at Virgil’s quick motion, because his soulmate was _currently hanging from the ceiling on a thin makeshift hammock_.

“I can explain,” Virgil said, hands still entwined with the webbing in the corner, that Roman could now see wasn't the cotton batting sold in stores, but was delicate strands of thread woven together to make...lace?

“Okay.”

“...You’re home early.”

Roman raised an eyebrow incredulously. “That’s not an explanation. How did you even get up there?”

“Um.” Virgil wasn’t wearing his foundation, yet still looked almost like he had a normal, slightly ruddy skin tone - which for him meant he was blushing heavily. “So you know how I’m basically part-spider?”

“I thought you just looked like one?”

“Okay, well, I’m actually part spider - kind of? It’s complicated. But I’m basically part spider. So...web.” 

“Wait, are - are those cobwebs yours?”

Virgil’s guilty expression morphed into offense. “They’re not _cobwebs_.”

“So yes.”

“...Yeah. I made most of them in my room while you guys were at home, but I put all of those up already, so I thought I’d make some more, and since no one was going to be home I thought I’d just...”

“Hang around?” The pun slipped out before he could stop it.

Virgil nodded seriously. “Yeah. It’s easier to hang them as I go along than to attach them later.”

“Huh. I didn’t know that was something you could do.”

“Yeah, well...I know it’s weird, I don’t broadcast it. That’s why I did most of them in my room, I didn’t want to...disturb any of you.” The guilty expression was back. “I really didn’t think you’d be home this early.” 

It took a moment for Roman to process that. “You’re...not disturbing me though.” Virgil offered him a skeptical face, and Roman continued. “No really, you aren’t. I’m just having mild heart palpitations because I’m afraid you’ll fall.”

Virgil blinked. “I’m not going to fall.”

“Sure babe, just -”

“Roman, it’s my web, I’m not going to fall. Why is that -” he leaned his head on one of his arms, and let out a breathless sort of laugh. “Why do you always focus on the _weirdest_ shit?”

Roman frowned up at him. “How is wanting you to be safe weird?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, but how is -”

“I’m nearly done,” Virgil interrupted, turning back to the web. “I’ll come down in a moment.”

Roman gave the web a good look for the first time. It didn’t look like a web. It looked like an intricate lacework, depicting (a rather familiar scene of) four skeletons dancing in a circle. Roman had seen videos of people making lace before, and their motions looked similar to what Virgil was doing, but he was only using two strings and they weren’t connected to any knobs. Now that Roman was looking, where were the strings coming from…?

_“I’m basically part spider. So...web.”_

Ah. Huh. Roman took a moment to put another mark on the “reasons my soulmate is an eldritch being” list, then after a moment he added another one - people who could make lace were automatically eldritch beings, in Roman’s opinion.

“Okay,” Roman said out loud, pulling the ottoman closer. “I’ll watch from down here.”

Virgil sent him a side-long look. “I’m not going to fall.”

“I never said you would,” Roman claimed as he took a seat. “Maybe I have no ulterior motives and just want to watch you make pretty things.”

Virgil was turned away from Roman so he couldn’t see what his boyfriend’s face looked like at the compliment, but he could see the tips of his ears that were poking out from under his hair turn pink. “I’m glad you like them at least,” Virgil said after a moment.

“Like them? _Like them_?” Virgil, they’re _gorgeous_!”

Virgil hunched into his shoulders a bit. “Um, thanks. It’s nice of you to say that.”

Roman pouted at his boyfriend’s back. “I’m not just _saying it_ , I mean it! It’s absolutely beautiful - almost as beautiful as you, by the way -”

“Oh my God, _Roman_.”

“- it’s seriously exquisite. I mean, it’s basically hand weaving lace, which even I know is super hard to do, and it looks absolutely stunning. You’re creating an incredibly intricate lacework of the spooky scary skeletons meme, and all I can think about when I look at them is just how gosh dang gorgeous your work is. You’re so talented, the amount of skill that must go into that -”

“ _Roman_.” Virgil freed his hands from the web, neatly severing the threads, before _just about giving Roman a heart attack by jumping straight down from the hammock_ , and ignoring Roman’s shriek in favor of stalking over to him and yanking Roman up by his collar to crush their lips together. Roman gasped into the kiss and Virgil took the opportunity to deepen it, sliding his hand up Roman’s neck and tilting his chin up with his thumb, stealing Roman’s breath away. Entirely too quickly, Virgil pulled away a fraction of an inch, and Roman took no responsibility for the whine that escaped his throat at the action.

“Stop saying sweet things,” Virgil growled and pulled Roman into another searing kiss.

And, well, if this was going to be the alternative, Roman could perhaps bring himself to stop.

For a few minutes at least.


End file.
